


Amalgam

by equilateralSeamstress



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3965131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equilateralSeamstress/pseuds/equilateralSeamstress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amalgam (noun): a mixture or blend<br/>A short story of Erisolsprite's experiences, from creation to post-explosion.<br/>aka: An Excuse to Explain Pale EriSol<br/>(This work in incredibly un-beta'd and probably a little inaccurate to the canon. Please be gentle.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amalgam

The memories ebbed in the back of his mind, almost like someone coming back from a nice, heavy concussion. They were worryingly similar, the same scenarios from two opposite perspectives. Blood, oh god so much blood, why in the everloving hell is there so much blood? Death, pain, dying, save your friends, save yourself. God, what has he done? The revving of the chainsaw, the feeling of spitting out loose teeth. The white hot searing pain of mental overwork until everything went black. Why does he remember seeing himself and… himself? His eyes opened slowly to reveal the proud clown before him with hands on his hips. He heard the wide grin coated in makeup comment, “That’s a thing of beauty.” And as the sprite looked down at what was now to be his body, all the loathing he had felt as two people conglomerated into immense abhorrence for himself.

The boy was… difficult to get acquainted with. Erisolsprite had his own problems to deal with, he didn’t have time to listen to this kid’s relationship woes. If only he knew the half of it. He would never have to know the experience of shooting the love of his life through her chest. He would never have to know the experience of being under mind control and forced to kill the love of his life. But maybe both of those were inevitable. A lot of things were, considering everything Sollux had the displeasure of hearing until…

That fight seemed so long ago. He couldn’t even remember the fight itself, just Eridan yelling and Sollux yelling and Feferi pleading for them to stop and yet they continued. That pissblood didn’t deserve to live after attacking such a beautiful prince, but… he made her happy. Lethal force was out of the question. He could have been so much worse. And when Sollux awoke, the world around him remained black and his teeth dislodged from his gums, but his mind wasn’t buzzing with the voices of the damned. It was… quiet. That was a new feeling, and it wasn’t the greatest or the worst, but he was okay. For once, he was just okay. And Eridan, he hadn’t known that until their memories had combined. Until then, Sollux wasn’t unconscious. He was /dead/. He looked dead to Eridan, and most certainly with remembering her screaming, hostile reaction, he looked dead to Feferi too. Mistakes were made, lots of them, and the remorse just wouldn’t stop flooding back to both halves of his memory.

However. Don’t beat yourself up about this, a part of him pleaded. The part that didn’t hold back before, the part that intended to kill. Things were better once that happened. You don’t even know. You changed his life, my life, your life.

Our life.

Thank you.

Maybe Eridan wasn’t as abhorrent as Sollux had thought. We both have demons and regrets. And that’s okay, even if it’s just okay. We’re just okay. Erisolsprite felt a warmth where his bloodpusher should have been if he still had one. He didn’t know whether to be happy or disgusted with how happy he felt.

The explosion was a blur. Neither of them could remember the exact reasoning as to why suddenly they weren’t fused anymore, but it certainly was sudden and uncalled for. Was the game over? Was this a new universe at last, or was it just another bubble? They had returned to their own bodies, feeling the same level of confusion and dubious levels of consciousness as when they had fused. Eridan opened his eyes first, blinking heavily and his head feeling groggy and uncomfortable. “S… Sol?” he tried to say, his voice worryingly hoarse. He—no, they must have been yelling earlier. “Are you okay?” He was lying on his back, and he turned his head to look around for the Gemini. To the left he found him, face down and sprawled out in the dirt. He turned toward him, wincing in pain as he shook Sollux.

Sollux groaned, turning over on his own accord toward Eridan, his own eyes shut in pain. “You… You in all one piece?” he asked, surprising himself with the feeling of teeth in his mouth. He opened his eyes taking in the sight before him with his bright dichromatic eyes.

Eridan couldn’t help but feel relieved at the sight of Sollux’s eyes again. Those eyes that were at one point theirs to share. “You tell me,” he replied, his lips twitching upward. “And you should probably tell me something else.”

“Like what?”

“What do you hear? And answer me seriously, Sol, because I don’t mean just me.”

Sollux closed his eyes and tried to listen for the calls of the damned and those toppling along the line separating them from mortality… But they didn’t come. It was almost nothing more than a distant memory, hearing those voices, and even now being fully healed physically that hadn’t changed back. “Nothing,” he relayed, his voice quiet with shock. “It’s gone.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Eridan continued. “You hated that. You couldn’t think straight.”

“I never told you that,” Sollux argued.

Eridan smiled. “You didn’t have to, remember?”

“Don’t get waxing philosophical with me, Ampora,” Sollux warned. “I wasn’t the only one sharing secrets against my will. I know everything about you.”

“And I you,” Eridan countered.

Sollux growled in irritation, halting that to preserve his pounding head. “I don’t know why you’re so calm about this. I feel like proverbial shit, if you get me.”

“I didn’t kill you,” Eridan simply replies. He continued, brow furrowing. “Do you have any idea how relieving that is? I made a lot of mistakes before I died, Sollux. I killed people. I thought you were one of them. Can’t I just be grateful that I made one less casualty? You know for a fact I’ve had sweeps to think about this. And you, I know for sure, have felt the same remorse as me.”

Sollux pauses and deflates a little. “Well… Yes. Yes I have. You have a point. But look, it’s not that simple.”

“What’s not that simple?” Eridan pressed. “My self-questioning for three sweeps isn’t fuckin’ simple, Sol. I get that it hurts for you since you’ve got all the mental power to yourself now, just tell me how to fix that so you stop acting like a fuckin’ wiggler.”

“Oh, I’m the one acting like a wiggler now, huh?” Sollux asked, smiling a little bit through the pounding in his head. “Excuse me for feeling Stockholm syndrome for someone I used to be.”

Eridan comprehended what Sollux meant and matched his smile. “You miss being us,” he summarized.

“Don’t say it like that…” Sollux complained, looking away, but Eridan continued to smile.

“You liked it a little. We complimented each other,” he continued. “The mental combined with the physical. We could have been pretty powerful in combat like that.”

“You saying you want to start fighting together instead of against each other?” Sollux inquired.

“I’m saying I think we make a good pair,” Eridan clarified. “And I take it we won’t be fighting anyone any time soon, so we might as well come together in a positive way.”

“Wow,” Sollux chortled. “That’s the most smooth I’ve ever heard you come onto someone. I take it’s a pale persuasion about this?”

“If that’s what you’d like. I still think you’d make a great adversary, but I do feel a lot of pity for you. That’s new, trust me.” It was now Eridan’s turn to look away, sitting up and observing his surroundings. A bright planet, not his container of leaf juice, but plenty to look at. Maybe if it truly was the new universe, this would be the planet of habitation. But he still wasn’t aware if that was truly the case.

“Personally I’m gonna have to go with not beating the shit out of you for once,” Sollux decided. “That sounds really weird coming from me, but it feels different now, since we used to be one person. It almost feels like I’d be punching myself in the face. And a lot of time has passed since we had to deal with the copious amounts of bullshit. If we are on a new planet in a new universe, the least we can do is start something new ourselves and stop fighting. We know way too much about each other that we could hold against.”

“But will we?” Eridan cut in.

Sollux sat up and observed the surroundings with Eridan, squeezing his hand tightly and leaning on his shoulder. “I don’t plan to.”


End file.
